Radiative transfer in strongly lossy inhomogeneous thin films

Abstract

Originally, the radiative transfer theory has been developed and has evolved in the framework of the real geometrical optics. However, such a context is inappropriate to deal with radiative transfers in strongly absorbing thin films because of the complex nature of rays. Here, we present an extension of the old theory to remove this limitation and exhibit the effective geometry that is probed by a scalar wave field within such media.